ACIS 2024 Proceedings

Abstract

Rumours in social media are of continuous concern for society and research. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that medical rumours could lead to poisoning and threatens health. Rumours are further known to spread significantly further and faster compared to factual information. Scholars developed persuasive debunking strategies, yet rumour spreaders interact with debunking messages rarely only, limiting the effectiveness of debunking efforts. This research addresses the problem of limited interaction to find explanations for it and enable future research to improve the spreading of debunking messages. We analysed the spread of rumour and debunking posts along the case of Ivermectin. Results show that debunking messages are shown to rumour spreaders only rarely, indicating that they not even have the opportunity to interact with them. On the other hand, debunking messages’ authors try not to draw attention to rumour posts to not increase their reach, highlighting a "debunking-attention-trade- off.”

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